Lok Satta JP is truth…That’s why he seems strange. The following lines from a recent article by a senior coloumnist best answers the cynical or ignorant criticism against JP…

“On March 30, 1930, Mahatma Gandhi set out on his salt march from Sabarmati to Dandi accompanied by just 78 satyagrahis. His own sceptic colleagues were laughing within, the media openly, at his march for the ‘trivial’ salt. The British had dismissed the march…

Powerful movements led by men of high ideals have always been symbolic. Never physical. They never held anyone captive, nor targeted any property. They exerted moral pressure. Not physical. They were genuine. Not ‘paid’ agitations…

Times like this need tall men to stand up to blackmail. Just as tall men like Gandhi and JP can only be trusted to lead genuine agitations, only equally tall men can be trusted to take on the fake ones. Simply being in power does not make one tall. Only those who risk unpopularity to tell the truth are tall men. Here is a poetic description of who is tall. When United States President Richard Nixon was being probed on the Watergate scandal, a US senator recited to the committee on Watergate a poem by Josiah Gilbert Holland, an American writer, who prayed to god for tall men whom “the lust of office does not kill” and the “spoils of office cannot buy”; “who possess opinions and a will”; “have honor”; “not lie”; and “who stand” demagogues and damn their “treacherous flatteries”. Only they, sang the poet, are “tall men”, “sun crowned”, “who live above the fog” in “public duty” and in “private thinking”. They are tall because they dare to court unpopularity for a higher purpose. This quality is the very essence of leadership. Says Darren Hardy, publisher of Success Magazine (US), “one of the most overlooked but important qualities of great leadership is one’s courage and willingness to do what is unpopular”. Hardy writes, ‘Abraham Lincoln, now regarded as one the greatest US presidents, was a most unpopular president in his times. . Hardy adds, ‘because he was willing to do what was unpopular....enduring malicious public abuse and the loss of friends, power and prestige, he became the man who “saved the Union” and emancipated slaves.’ Hardy asks, “where would we be today if he had only done what was popular?” (http://darrenhardy.success.com/2010/03/unpopular/) Lincoln chose to be unpopular to protect America…

Recall Gandhi again. He courted unpopularity with ease for the nation’s cause. Before his ‘unpopular’ salt march that later turned unbelievably ‘popular’, Gandhiji dared unthinkable unpopularity in 1920s when he called off the Non-cooperation Movement because it had turned violent. When a BBC correspondent derisively asked him whether his popularity had deserted him, Gandhiji replied, “popularity comes without invitation and goes without farewell”. Gandhiji willingly placed the nation over his popularity index…That is leadership. Not winning votes, seats and elections or occupying positions of power or respect in society…

If only political leaders, intellectuals or media, ever hungry for popularity, risk a bit of it for nation’s sake , will they not correct the nation’s drift?”